Quilt Festival Set For September
The 2026 West Virginia Quilt Festival will bring quilters from across the state and beyond to the Cedar Lakes Conference Center in Ripley Sept. 17 to Sept. 19.
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Banjo
A Celebration of Flatfoot Dancing And Preserving A Camp For Future Scouts, This West Virginia Morning
On this West Virginia Morning, keeping the flatfoot dance tradition alive and preserving a scout camp for future generations.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsTraditional Music And Traditional Tattoos Live On At The Parlor Room
John Haywood of Whitesburg, Kentucky says he got his first guitar and his first tattoo when he was about 13 years old. These days, Haywood is the proprietor of Parlor Room Art and Tattoo in downtown Whitesburg. It’s a place where some people get inked up … and some play traditional music. It’s a place unlike any other, as Zack Harold reports.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsClawhammer Banjo Player Aunt Jeanie Wilson And Our Song Of The Week, This West Virginia Morning
On this West Virginia Morning, dignitaries recently gathered to honor clawhammer banjo player Aunt Jeanie Wilson with a Legends and Lore signpost unveiled in Chief Logan State Park. Briana Heaney was there and has this story.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsA Class Project Discusses Being Inside Appalachia
This week, a southern Ohio college writing class recently learned about the idea of Appalachian identity and then told us what they thought. Kentucky has a new poet laureate so we listen back to a 2020 conversation with author Silas House, about growing up in the mountains. And in Harlan Kentucky, a mural sparked strong opinions over possums.
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How Black Musicians And Luthiers Are Reclaiming The Banjo
The banjo, an instrument closely associated with mountain music, originated in Africa and came to America with enslaved Africans. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was taken up by white musicians and became a staple of minstrelsy, a form of racist entertainment in which white performers—often in blackface—depicted stereotypes of Black Americans. Eventually the banjo crossed fully over into white public culture and was separated from its African roots and identity. Now, there’s an emerging movement of Black musicians who are reclaiming the banjo and taking the instrument—and its sound—in new directions.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsRecycling Never Sounded So Good: Appalachian Luthiers Turn Cardboard And Tin Cans Into Musical Instruments
As part of our Inside Appalachia Folkways series, reporter Rachel Moore spoke to two instrument makers in Western North Carolina who are carrying on the DIY instrument legacy.
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